SCALLOP

no bones, no eyes, no
soul no wonder I tell
my secrets to you

filled with sea, milky
and fat with want

RING FINDERS DOT COM

Close to here, below the full moon
a gram of gold is buried under down –
my hot hands worsen the illusion of nothingness
and threaten melt. I ask a child that I love how
something can be brought back. She says
say ‘O, glorious god – please melt the ice
so I can find my ring.’ I know asking god
doesn’t make anything unlost. Her mother cries
to me in the cold kitchen, curses names
and weeps at the sight of last bones.
I do not know what I am intended
to release in witness to her grief –
I am meant to lose
gold things. There are men
out there who recover rings.
Their fee is what you find
sufficient. So, how can one
measure the retch of loss?
I barely missed it
when I had it.

STILL LIFE

Michael reminds me that when you lay the dead hand
you cannot control the mouth of the bird

at some point, a being is forced to feed itself
through confinement or starvation

in the beginning of my last love’s absence, the driver of my mouth became
unlanguaged – nothing to say beyond my askance

ten mourning doves greet two lovers on the other side of the city
I receive an email that tells me misalignment is not to blame for my pain

my devotion has bankrupt me
how like a stone it is to wait

NOT GONE NOT FORGOTTEN

for Rebeca

a cathedral of faith
has a thousand narrow steps

there she and I accessed a scripture through lesson
one cannot fuck their way atop love mountain

somewhere, there is piranha in a hotel lobby
with the face of a man you were once tied to

every time a beautiful woman leaves a city
it snows hard and purifies that want for ugly

to be divorced from something is to create
an immiscible thing

man has always rejected these channels to god
who are we to tune the dials for them

still flesh is not life she said, running her fingers over
the wound in angora

yes, flesh is not life but we are chained
by our consumption

love leaves us pilled and wanting
to be limbered by devotion

my harmless no thing, I won’t let you angel
in man’s redemption arc

where dead voices gather, we’ll gorge
done with ghosts

the sky, split from our congruence in a cell tower
where our leaving has bound us

sealed with last season’s plum
locked with a skeleton key

I must put an end to coincidence I said to her
because desperation for luck is famously not a logic

I want to die and live forever she said
so, we are meat coming back to life

I hope these wickers hold
our juicy asses on our porches at sundown

if she should ever need me she’ll know where I’ll be
there are lots of blues to be seen

close to laundry and milk
near our throat wedding which walked at midnight

today, may we be two hounds
circling a collapsed silo

on the hunt for more alive
this work of a woman who is free